He looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to understand her. “Her name was Alisa Smithson,” he finally whispered, “and she was the most beautiful woman in the solar system.”
She nodded. “Alisa Smithson. Goodbye Logan. I’m sorry that this was what your life became.” She turned away from him and marched from the room without looking over her shoulder. She was the last person to lay eyes on Alexander Logan, Abrogationist, terrorist, and broken man.
“MY SHUTTLE IS AWAY,” ‘Elwa said. “The Queen of Sheba’s crew is all accounted for.”
“We’re finishing up with reprogramming the torpedoes,” Matthew said, nervously tapping his fingers on the console.
“I hope you’re almost done,” Tamru said. “We’re still on a timetable.”
Matthew turned to look over his shoulder at Grace. She tapped away at one of the secondary consoles. “I’m working on it. Torpedo’s are supposed to strike targets, not tailgate them. But there’s enough settings in here that I can make it work.”
Thompson frowned. “Are you sure I shouldn’t take a look at what—”
“She’s got it,” Matthew said. “Of all my crew, she’s the best at poking through computer programs. And she’s smart. I trust her.”
“I’ll never understand you.”
The feeling was mutual, but Matthew thought that was implied in their relationship.
“There,” Grace said. “It’ll try and keep fifteen meters from its target. Hopefully. And when the target stops suddenly, they’ll evade and relock on Phobos.”
“That will have to work,” Matthew said. “Lantern Fleet, we’re ready. We’ll follow in the Queen’s wake, match its speed, and then drop the torpedoes right on its tail to make sure they get locked into course.”
“The Queen is lined up on impact trajectory,” Tamru said. “Mom, if you want to give the order?”
There was the slightest moment of hesitation before ‘Elwa issued the command. “Do it.”
“Burning the Queen’s engines now.”
The kilometer-long super freighter’s aft engines lit up and started it on its final voyage. A ship that large took time to pick up speed, but simple physics guaranteed that when it did it, it would strike with massive force. Matthew didn’t even want to guess how much this would cost ‘Elwa financially. A hundred million, at least. Probably more.
He angled the Doubt to follow in its path and pushed the throttle forward. “Davey, Abigail, we’ll pass through the edge of the defensive field. Keep an eye on things, would you?”
Grace crept up behind him as they neared the Queen’s aft. “You know if I messed up, we’re firing a nuclear weapon at point-blank range.”
“Did you mess up?” Matthew asked.
“No. But I recommend running away. Just in case.”
“You people are insane,” Thompson grumbled.
Matthew pulled the Doubt up to the Queen, right between her engines to avoid backblast. He let off the throttle and drifted to about fifty meters back. One of the thumpers fired at a nearby satellite, turning it into a short-lived fireball, quickly snuffed by vacuum. Matthew took a deep breath and let it slowly escape from pursed lips. This was it.
“Still want me to do the honors?” Thompson asked.
Instead of answering, he called Whitaker.
“Good news,” Whitaker said, too cheerful for Matthew’s liking. “I’ve made it to the Sparrow. Stein cleared my path. And I even played the hero and have seven survivors from the Phobos Platform in tow.”
“And Yvonne? My mother?”
“No sign of them. I don’t have any fighters, and I’m down to one functioning arm, Cole. I can’t mount a rescue.”
“I’m about to make another attack. This one won’t miss. Everyone on that station dies.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I know you have a sister,” Matthew said. “Would you go back for her?”
Whitaker’s voice turned to ice. “You know nothing about me. Nothing about her.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Nor will I. None of the survivors are pilots. If I do something stupid, they die too. Simple math says I stay on the Sparrow.”
Matthew clenched his fist and looked at the navigational chart warning of their upcoming crash into Phobos. “You have three minutes, twenty-two seconds.”
“I have to wait either way,” Whitaker said calmly. “If I leave too early, the array may shoot us down.”
Matthew gripped the hair at the back of his head. He clenched his eyes shut.
“Do it.”
Thompson sighed and, after a moment, pulled the trigger that sealed the fate of two people that Matthew loved.
“torpedoes two and three away.”
Matthew opened his eyes, giving three seconds for them to clear the hull, and then turned the Doubt out of the field, pushing the throttle wide open.
“It worked!” Captain Dominguez said. “They’re sitting right off the Queen’s hull.”
“And the queen is still accelerating,” Tamru confirmed. “She’ll hit like a comet.”
Matthew could only breathe heavily as the tears began to fall. He felt Grace’s hand rest on his shoulder. At least he wouldn’t lose everyone. “Lantern Fleet, keep your distance,” he said. “Mars is about to lose a moon.”
WHITAKER STARED AT the controls of the Sparrow, mind strangely numb.
Somehow, someone had been in his office. His key cylinder shouldn’t have given access to the upper deck of the Imperious Doubt, but someone had been up there anyway. That was the only way Matthew could have known about Hannah. For a single terrible moment, he wondered if they had broken into his files. Then they would know everything. But that was impossible. They had only seen the picture and made obvious connections. Nothing more.
But the insinuation made him furious. Of course, he would go back for Hannah. He would walk into hell for her. Had been doing so for many long years. He thought back to the last time he had seen her. Long ago now, and yet not that long. Time was fickle like that. Physics made it so.
He swore at Matthew and the universe in general and left the cockpit. Seven sets of eyes stared at him as he ran through the common room toward the exit ramp. “I have to check on someone else,” he muttered. “I’ll be back.”
He jogged down the ramp and into the hangar. The only sound was the hum of the Sparrow’s engines as they warmed up. There was no one to stop him as he rushed toward the corridor leading into Phobos. He couldn’t hope to go the whole way to the control room with the time he had, but he could at least—
Yvonne and Elizabeth emerged from the corridor, both a mess. Yvonne was bleeding from several minor injuries, and Elizabeth was limping badly and toting a rifle. Her other arm was slung over Yvonne’s shoulder, clearly trying to keep weight off of one of her ankles. “Hurry!” he shouted at them. “There are nuclear torpedoes en route!”
“Hurrying isn’t an option right now,” Elizabeth said, wincing.
Whitaker rolled his eyes and took Yvonne’s place, using his prosthetic arm to support Elizabeth’s weight. “I’ve got her. Yvonne, the Sparrow’s already warming up. She’ll need a pilot familiar with her.”
Yvonne jogged ahead toward the ship.
Elizabeth’s arm gripped his bad shoulder, and he nearly cried out in pain. After all he had done for these people, they had better make it. They shambled as quickly as they could across the hangar, and when they reached the ramp, he breathed a sigh of relief. “I expect you’ll tell Matthew about this.”
She grunted at the exertion of climbing the incline but shook her head sadly at him. “Virtue isn’t its own reward?”
They entered the airlock and Whitaker closed it behind them. “No,” he said, “it isn’t.”
ONCE CLEAR OF THE DANGER zone, they all crammed into the bridge of the Imperious Doubt, anxious to see what was about to happen. It was roomier than the Sparrow, but Davey thought Abigail’s bulk still made it feel like a can of tho
se cheap, over-salted sausages she liked.
Matthew had given them momentum that would keep them moving away from Phobos but spun now to face it. Then he wilted. Davey felt something unpleasant in his stomach, fear coiled with anger, and something else. He couldn’t imagine what Matthew was feeling with his mother still on Phobos. But he could at least grasp the beginning of it.
The Sparrow crew was the only family he’d ever had, or at least remembered, and Yvonne and Elizabeth were both like a mother to him. Yvonne wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider motherly, not in the warm fuzzy sense anyway. But she was always there for him, always someone to talk to, even with whatever problem she’d been dealing with since Ceres. And Elizabeth, was motherly and encouraging. Or maybe she was more like a grandmother. If Davey had any of those, he couldn’t remember them either.
There would be a hole in the crew forever.
They watched in silence as the Queen continued its death dive into Phobos. Cannon fire raked at its side, and it even endured a couple torpedo hits, but it would take a lot of firepower to disable a ship that size. Even if its engines died, it would continue on its course with incredible inertia. Already, fires and smoke bled from the sides of the magnificent ship, and Davey wondered what ‘Elwa was feeling watching it dive to its doom.
The comm pinged and Matthew answered. “Whitaker, you have to leave now. You’ve got about thirty seconds to impact.”
“Hello to you too, Matthew,” Yvonne said. “The Sparrow is just now lifting off. What’s this about an impact?”
Matthew almost fell out of his seat. “My mother—”
“We’re fine. A little worse for wear, but we’ll live. Impact. Talk. Now.”
“The Queen of Sheba and two nuclear weapons.”
Yvonne was silent for a moment. “I’m getting the Sparrow turned around to leave the hangar. How much time do I have?”
Davey glanced at the navigation chart plotting the Queen’s dive. They were out of time.
“Clock’s at zero,” Matthew whispered.
The Queen slammed into the side of Phobos like the universe’s biggest hammer on its biggest anvil. Her bow plowed into the crust, sending rock spiraling into space before an explosion ripped apart the front module of the ship. The long spine buckled as the inertia from the massive engines on the back drove the Queen deeper. At this range, it was clear by comparison both how large a one-kilometer ship and how small a twelve-kilometer moon are.
“Firing the engines,” Yvonne said. “We’ll be out of—”
She was cut off in a squeal of static as two small nuclear warheads detonated in spheres of light. What was left of the Queen turned into shrapnel, blasting apart the surface of Phobos. Deep snaking fissures raced across the moon’s face as its thin regolith crust collapsed.
Originally nothing more than an asteroid captured from the belt between Mars and Jupiter, tiny Phobos was a fragile thing, in too low an orbit. When humans first studied it through telescopes and probes, it already showed signs of impending destruction, stretch marks from enduring the tidal forces of Mars’ gravity. Those greedy fingers of gravity were slowly pulling Phobos toward Mars. One day, in the distant future, Phobos would have crossed a line and been broken up on its own by the sheer forces of its mad orbit. Mars’ equator would be pelted by some of the debris, and the rest would form a ring of dark rock around the red planet. That hypothetical was supposed to be millions of years away.
As the surface continued to break apart, Davey realized that they had moved that timetable up to now.
WHEN THE MOON SHUDDERED for the first time, the Sparrow’s nose had just pointed out of the hangar. The lights in the tunnel flickered briefly, and dust drifted off the walls, but the tunnel held. Yvonne took one last look over her instruments. Now or never.
“Firing the engines,” Yvonne said. “We’ll be out of—” A burst of static from the comms cut her off, and the lights in the tunnel went out permanently. She flipped on the Sparrow’s exterior lights right as the moon began to shake violently and pushed the throttle as far forward as she dared. Rock formations half the size of the Sparrow broke off the wall and floated nearly free, Phobos’ tiny gravity only barely altering their course. She spun around one, almost scraping the wall in the effort.
Whitaker stumbled into the cockpit, “What in... Oh my.”
“Sit down and shut up!” The tremors intensified, and the straight tunnel began to warp visibly in shape as tortured rock splintered under immense pressure.
“Watch out for—”
“I said shut up!” Yvonne shouted as a sharp rock formation sliced through the tunnel threatening to block it entirely. They slipped past even as the Sparrow was showered with debris.
Then the largest tremor yet hit, and the exit disappeared entirely as the tunnel ceased to exist. Yvonne cursed under her breath and rotated the ship, using the throttle to kill their momentum. Behind them, the hangar shredded as if a pair of giant hands grabbed each end and twisted it in opposite directions. Whitaker whistled. She could agree with the sentiment as she turned back to face what used to be the exit, praying the maelstrom of destruction would clear it again.
Instead, the sides of the tunnel opened up, revealing dark fissures between the rocks. She picked the largest of these and nosed the Sparrow in. They were near the surface. All they needed was for Phobos to break apart enough to find it.
“You’re insane,” Whitaker muttered.
“It’s either certain death or probable death. Take your pick.”
They looped around a trio of rock fragments bigger than the Sparrow, wincing as a smaller one scraped down the hull. Their current pathway trembled and began to break apart and compress.
“There!” Whitaker pointed. “An exit!”
She saw it too. A brief flash of red. Mars. She hit the maneuvering thrusters and twisted in the right direction, nosing up the throttle. There it was. Two hundred meters ahead, a sliver of light, barely big enough for the Sparrow. And it was narrowing. She maxed the throttle, and the engines roared through the deck. It was going to be close. Way too close.
“We’re not going to make it,” Whitaker said.
“Ye of little faith.” She rotated the Sparrow to slip through the crack and gripped the yoke till her knuckles were white. And then they were through. Mars stretched out before them, and it had never been a more welcome sight.
LANTERN FLEET WATCHED in silence as Phobos slowly gave in to the forces tearing it apart. As its center of gravity was disrupted and the shallow crust giving it cohesion disappeared, it ground itself to pieces, and Mars’ gravity was already working to spread the remains out. Matthew kept his eyes glued to the scopes, praying for some sign of the Sparrow. He checked the comms again but was just met with a burst of static. It would be some time before the background radiological noise let a comm signal through. They’d learned that at Ceres.
“This is going to leave a mess,” Grace muttered. She’d pulled up the navigation chart. “The computer is having a hard time tracking all the rocks out there.” She tapped a key a few times. “Actually, navigation just crashed entirely. So... yeah. Stay away.”
A few larger chunks had broken off of Phobos, perhaps half a kilometer across or larger, and were starting to drift away. Matthew watched as the last fires of the Queen of Sheba were snuffed by the grinding tempest. It was a ballet of destruction on a scale never before directly witnessed by mankind, the kind of thing astronomers only theorized about happening in the past or distant future. This may have been an entirely avoidable tragedy, but at least the astronomers were going to have a field day with it.
He checked the comms and found the static had begun to decline. “Sparrow?” he asked on an open channel. “Sparrow, are you out there?”
Silence and then a spot of distortion.
“Sparrow, are you there?”
“We... you Matth...”
“Sparrow, is that you?”
“We hear you loud and clear, Matthew,” Yvonne said,
and Matthew’s heart almost stopped for the joy of the moment. “We’ll loop around the debris field and join you.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“We are. It’s me, your mother, Whitaker, and seven other survivors.” She gave the nervous laugh of one too tired to do anything else. “It is good to hear your voice. Is everyone there?”
“We’re all here,” Grace said. “Davey, Abigail, even Ryan Thompson.”
“Sounds like you guys have a story too.”
“You know what,” Matthew said. “Change of plans. Head to Arizona. We’ll meet up to swap ships at the Cole farm.”
“Understood. See you soon.”
Matthew flipped open the channel to the fleet. “Lantern Fleet. It was an honor to lead you today. Cliche as it sounds, humanity owes you all a debt.”
“It was a pleasure to stand by your side,” Captain Dominguez said. “And I’ll gladly look forward to meeting you in person someday soon.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ewan said. “Speeches and niceties are great and all, but I don’t suppose someone could give us a tow. We’re floating dead in space.”
“Tamru,” Gebre’elwa said. “Why don’t you give the Dragon a tow back to the station before looping back for the escape shuttles. We have mechanics that can take a look at it. Matthew, drop by when you can. You and I have a lot to discuss.”
“I’ll do that,” he promised. “Grace, plot us a deorbit trajectory for Arizona.”
“Navigation is as effective as a brick right now, remember?”
“Right. We’ll put some distance in between us and Phobos first.”
What used to be Phobos was beginning to lose its shape as it expanded. Equatorial colonies would have to keep a close eye to make sure no larger fragments were pushed out of orbit. They would need to be redirected or destroyed before that happened. The skies of Mars would be forever changed by the destruction of Phobos. No longer would the colonists look up and see the moon cross their vision twice a day. Over the next weeks and months, it would slowly form a ring around Mars, narrow bands of dark rocks, a monument to the Battle of Phobos.
After Moses: Wormwood Page 47